This section of the timeline of United States history concerns events from 1950 to 1969.
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Civil Rights and the 1950s: Crash Course US History #39
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Vietnam War | The 20th century | World history | Khan Academy
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World History 1950 -1959
Transcription
Episode 39: Consensus and Protest: Civil Rights LOCKED Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. history and today we’re going to look at one of the most important periods of American social history, the 1950s. Why is it so important? Well, first because it saw the advent of the greatest invention in human history: Television. Mr. Green, Mr. Green! I like TV! By the way, you’re from the future. How does the X-Files end? Are there aliens or no aliens? No spoilers, Me From The Past, you’re going to have to go to college and watch the X-Files get terrible just like I did. No it’s mostly important because of the Civil Rights Movement We’re going to talk about some of the heroic figures like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, but much of the real story is about the thousands of people you’ve never heard of who fought to make America more inclusive. But before we look at the various changes that the Civil Rights Movement was pushing for, we should spend a little time looking at the society that they were trying to change. The 1950s has been called a period of consensus, and I suppose it was, at least for the white males who wrote about it and who all agreed that the 1950s were fantastic for white males. Consensus culture was caused first, by the Cold War – people were hesitant to criticize the United States for fear of being branded a communist, and, second, by affluence – increasing prosperity meant that more people didn’t have as much to be critical of. And this widespread affluence was something new in the United States. Between 1946 and 1960 Americans experienced a period of economic expansion that saw standards of living rise and gross national product more than double. And unlike many previous American economic expansions, much of the growing prosperity in the fifties was shared by ordinary working people who saw their wages rise. To quote our old friend Eric Foner, “By 1960, an estimated 60 percent of Americans enjoyed what the government defined as a middle-class standard of living.”[1] And this meant that increasing numbers of Americans had access things like television, and air conditioning, and dishwashers and air travel. That doesn’t really seem like a bonus. Anyway, despite the fact that they were being stuffed into tiny metal cylinders and hurdled through the air, most Americans were happy because they had, like, indoor plumbing and electricity. intro The 1950s was the era of suburbanization. The number of homes in the United States doubled during the decade, which had the pleasant side effect of creating lots of construction jobs. The classic example of suburbanization was Levittown in New York, where 10,000 almost identical homes were built and became home to 40,000 people almost overnight. And living further from the city meant that more Americans needed cars, which was good news for Detroit where cars were being churned out with the expectation that Americans would replace them every two years. By 1960, 80% of Americans owned at least one car and 14% had two or more. And car culture changed the way that Americans lived and shopped. I mean it gave us shopping malls, and drive thru restaurants, and the backseat makeout session. I mean, high school me didn’t get the backseat makeout session. But, other people did! I did get the Burger King drive thru though. And lots of it. Our whole picture of the American standard of living, with its abundance of consumer goods and plentiful services was established in the 1950s. And so, for so for many people this era was something of a “golden age” especially when we look back on it today with nostalgia. But there were critics, even at the time. So when we say the 1950s were an era of consensus, one of the things we’re saying is there wasn’t much room for debate about what it meant to be an American. Most people agreed on the American values: individualism, respect for private property, and belief in equal opportunity. The key problem was that we believed in equal opportunity, but didn’t actually provide it. But some people were concerned that the cookie cutter vision of the good life and the celebration of the middle class lifestyle was displacing other conceptions of citizenship. Like the sociologist C. Wright Mills described a combination of military, corporate, and political leaders as a power elite whose control over government and the economy was such as to make democracy an afterthought. In The Lonely Crowd sociologist David Riesman criticized Americans for being conformist and lacking the rich inner life necessary to be truly independent. And John Kenneth Galbraith questioned an Affluent Society that would pay for new cars and new missiles but not for new schools. And we can’t mention the 1950s without discussing teenagers since this was the decade that gave us Rock and Roll, and rock stars like Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and Elvis Presley and his hips. Another gift of the 1950s was literature, much of which appeals especially to teenagers. Like, the Beats presented a rather drug-fueled and not always coherent criticism of the bourgeois 1950’s morals. They rejected materialism, and suburban ennui and things like regular jobs while celebrating impulsivity, and recklessness, experimentation and freedom. And also heroin. So you might have noticed something about all those critics of the 1950s that I just mentioned: they were all white dudes. Now, we’re gonna be talking about women in the 1950s and 1960s next week because their liberation movement began a bit later, but what most people call the Civil Rights Movement really did begin in the 1950s. While the 1950s were something of a golden age for many blue and white collar workers, it was hardly a period of expanding opportunities for African Americans. Rigid segregation was the rule throughout the country, especially in housing, but also in jobs and in employment. In the South, public accommodations were segregated by law, while in the north it was usually happening by custom or de facto segregation. To give just one example, the new suburban neighborhoods that sprang up in the 1950s were almost completely white and this remained true for decades. According Eric Foner, “As late as the 1990s, nearly 90 percent of suburban whites lived in communities with non-white populations less than 1 percent.” And it wasn’t just housing. In the 1950s half of black families lived in poverty. When they were able to get union jobs, black workers had less seniority than their white counterparts so their employment was less stable. And their educational opportunities were severely limited by sub-standard segregated schools. Now you might think the Civil Rights Movement began with Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott or else Brown v. Board of Education, but it really started during WW2 with efforts like those of A. Philip Randolph and the soldiers taking part in the Double-V crusade. But even before that, black Americans had been fighting for civil rights. It’s just that in the 1950s, they started to win. So, desegregating schools was a key goal of the Civil Rights movement. And it started in California in 1946. In the case of Mendez v. Westminster the California Supreme Court ruled that Orange County, of all places, had to desegregate their schools. They’d been discriminating against Latinos. And then, California’s governor, Earl Warren, signed an order that repealed all school segregation in the state. That same Earl Warren, by the way, was Chief Justice when the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education came before the Supreme Court in 1954. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall had been pursuing a legal strategy of trying to make states live up to the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that required all public facilities to be separate but equal. They started by bringing lawsuits against professional schools like law schools, because it was really obvious that the three classrooms and no library that Texas set up for its African American law students were not equal to the actual University of Texas’s law school. But the Brown case was about public schools for children. It was actually a combination of 5 cases from 4 states, of which Brown happened to be alphabetically the first. The Board of Education in question incidentally was in Topeka Kansas, not one of the states of the old Confederacy, but nonetheless a city that did restricted schooling by race. Oh, it’s time for the Mystery Document? The rules here are simple. I read the Mystery Document. If I’m wrong, I get shocked. "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system. [Footnote 10]"[2] Stan, the last two weeks you have given me two extraordinary gifts and I am thankful. It is Earl Warren from Brown v. Board of Education. Huzzah! Justice Warren is actually quoting from sociological research there that shows that segregation itself is psychologically damaging to black children because they recognize that being separated out is a badge of inferiority. Alright, let’s go to the Thought Bubble. The Brown decision was a watershed but it didn’t lead to massive immediate desegregation of the nation’s public schools. In fact, it spawned what came to be known as “Massive Resistance” in the South. The resistance got so massive, in fact, that a number of counties, rather than integrate their schools, closed them. Prince Edward County in Virginia, for instance, closed its schools in 1959 and didn’t re-open them again until 1964. Except they didn’t really close them because many states appropriated funds to pay for white students to attend “private” academies. Some states got so into the resistance that they began to fly the Confederate Battle flag over their state capitol buildings. Yes, I’m looking at you Alabama and South Carolina. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and got arrested, kicking off the Montgomery Bus Boycott that lasted almost a year. A lot of people think that Parks was simply an average African American working woman who was tired and fed up with segregation, but the truth is more complicated. Parks had been active in politics since the 1930s and had protested the notorious Scottsboro Boys case. She had served as secretary for the NAACP and she had begun her quest to register to vote in Alabama in 1943. She failed a literacy test three times before becoming one of the very few black people registered to vote in the state. And in 1954 she attended a training session for political activists and met other civil rights radicals. So Rosa Parks was an active participant in the fight for black civil rights long before she sat on that bus. The Bus Boycott also thrust into prominence a young pastor from Atlanta, the 26 year old Martin Luther King Jr. He helped to organize the boycott from his Baptist church, which reminds us that black churches played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement. That boycott would go on to last for 381 days and in the end, the city of Montgomery relented. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So that was, of course, only the beginning for Martin Luther King, who achieved his greatest triumphs in the 1960s. After Montgomery, he was instrumental in forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a coalition of black civil rights and church leaders who pushed for integration. And they needed to fight hard, especially in the face of Massive Resistance and an Eisenhower administration that was lukewarm at best about civil rights. But I suppose Eisenhower did stick up for civil rights when forced to, as when Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School by 9 black students in 1957. Eisenhower was like, “You know, as the guy who invaded Normandy, I don’t think that’s the best use for the National Guard.” So, Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division (not the entirety of it, but some of it) to Little Rock, Arkansas, to walk kids to school. Which they did for a year. After that, Faubus closed the schools, but at least the federal government showed that it wouldn’t allow states to ignore court orders about the Constitution. In your face, John C. Calhoun. Despite the court decision and the dispatching of Federal troops, by the end of the 1950s fewer than two percent of black students attended integrated schools in the South. So, the modern movement for Civil Rights had begun, but it was clear that there was still a lot of work to do. But the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement shows us that the picture of consensus in the 1950s is not quite as clear-cut as its proponents would have us believe. Yes, there was widespread affluence, particularly among white people, and criticism of the government and America generally was stifled by the fear of appearing to sympathize with Communism. But there was also widespread systemic inequality and poverty in the decade that shows just how far away we were from living the ideal of equal opportunity. That we have made real progress, and we have, is a credit to the voices of protest. Next week we’ll see how women, Latinos, and gay people added their voices to the protests and look at what they were and were not able to change in the 1960s. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you then. Crash Course is made with the help of all of these nice people and it’s possible because of your support through Subbable.com. Subbable is a voluntary subscription service that allows you to subscribe to Crash Course at the price of your choosing, including zero dollars a month. But hopefully more than that. There are also great perks you can get, like signed posters. So if you like and value Crash Course, help us keep it free for everyone for ever by subscribing now at Subbable. You can click on my face. Now, my face moved, but you can still click on it. Thanks again for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome. ________________ [1] Foner Give me Liberty ebook version p. 992 [2] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/case.html
1950s
Presidency of Harry S. Truman
- 1950 – Senator Joseph McCarthy gains power, and McCarthyism (1950–1954) begins
- 1950 – McCarran Internal Security Act
- 1950 – Korean War begins
- 1950 – The comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz, is first published
- 1950 – NBC airs Broadway Open House a late-night comedy, variety, talk show through 1951. Hosted by Morey Amsterdam and Jerry Lester and Dagmar, it serves as the prototype for The Tonight Show
- 1950 – Failed assassination attempt by two Puerto Rican nationals on President Harry S. Truman while he was living at Blair House.
- 1951 – 22nd Amendment, establishing term limits for president.
- 1951 – Mutual Security Act
- 1951 – General Douglas MacArthur fired by President Truman for comments about using nuclear weapons on China
- 1951 – The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. One month later, the situation comedy I Love Lucy premieres on CBS, sparking the rise of television in the American home and the Golden Age of Television.
- 1951 – See It Now, an American newsmagazine and documentary series broadcast by CBS from 1951 to 1958. It was created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly, Murrow being the host of the show.
- 1951 – The Catcher in the Rye is published by J. D. Salinger and invigorates the rebellious youth of the period, eventually earning the title of a Classic with its profound impact.
- 1952 – The debut of the Today show on NBC, originally hosted by Dave Garroway is the fourth longest running talk show on television.
- 1952 – ANZUS Treaty enters into force
- 1952 – Immigration and Nationality Act
- 1952 – In the United States presidential election, Dwight D. Eisenhower elected as president, Richard Nixon elected as vice president
Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower
- January 20, 1953 – Eisenhower becomes the 34th president and Nixon becomes the 36th vice president
- 1953 – Rosenbergs executed
- 1953 – Korean Armistice Agreement
- 1953 – Shah of Iran returns to power in CIA-orchestrated coup known as Operation Ajax
- 1954 – The Tournament of Roses Parade becomes the first event nationally televised in color
- 1954 – Detonation of Castle Bravo, a 15 megaton Hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki weapons, it vaporized three islands, displaced the islanders and caused long lasting contamination.
- 1954 – Joseph McCarthy discredited in Army-McCarthy hearings
- 1954 – Censure or formal disapproval on Senator Joseph McCarthy after the Army-McCarthy hearings. He died three years later in 1957.
- 1954 – President Eisenhower proposes the Domino theory: If South Vietnam fell to communism, so too would all nations of Southeast Asia, and eventually worldwide.
- 1954 – First Indochina War ends after the U.S. kept sending aid to the French. France was defeated by Ho Chi Minh and his army at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
- 1954 – The CIA overthrows Guatemala's president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (Operation PBSuccess)
- 1954 – Saint Lawrence Seaway Act, permitting the construction of the system of locks, canals and channels that permits ocean-going vessels to travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the North American Great Lakes, is approved
- 1954 – Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark decision of the Supreme Court, declares state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students and denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional
- 1954 – The U.S. becomes a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (or SEATO) alliance
- 1954 – Geneva Conference. U.S. rejects the French decision to recognize Communist control of North Vietnam. U.S. increases aid to South Vietnam.
- 1954 – The People's Republic of China lays siege on Quemoy and Matsu Islands; Eisenhower sends in Navy to demonstrate an invasion of Taiwan would not be permitted
- 1954 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at an all-time high of 382.74, the first time the Dow has surpassed its peak level reached just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929
- 1954 – NBC airs The Tonight Show, the first late-night talk show, originally hosted by Steve Allen
- 1954 – The Democrats retake both houses of Congress in the Midterms. Will keep the Senate until 1981 and the House until 1994.
- 1955 – Ray Kroc opens a McDonald's fast food restaurant and, after purchasing the franchise from its original owners, oversees its national (and later, worldwide) expansion
- 1955 – Murder of Emmett Till
- 1955 – Rosa Parks remains seated on a bus, the incident which evolves into the Montgomery bus boycott
- 1955 – AFL and CIO merge in America's largest labor union federation
- 1955 – Warsaw Pact, which establishes a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe (including the USSR)
- 1955 – Disneyland opens at Anaheim, California
- 1955 – Jonas Salk develops polio vaccine
- 1955 – Rock and roll music enters the mainstream, with "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets becoming the first record to top the Billboard pop charts. Elvis Presley also begins his rise to fame around this same time.
- 1955 – Actor James Dean is killed in a highway accident
- 1956 – The controversial 1956 Sugar Bowl takes place. Georgia's pro segregationist governor publicly threatens Georgia' Tech's president to not allow the game to take place, as students riot.
- 1956 – President Eisenhower secures passages of Interstate Highway Act, which will construct 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System over a 20-year period
- 1956 – The U.S. refuses to provide military support the Hungarian Revolution
- 1956 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.
- 1956 – Marilyn Monroe marries playwright Arthur Miller.
- 1956 – Jackson Pollock dies in a car crash
- 1956 – 1956 United States presidential election: Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected president, Richard Nixon reelected vice president
- 1956 – "In God We Trust" adopted as national motto
- January 20, 1957 – President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon begin second terms
- 1957 – Eisenhower Doctrine, wherein a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state
- 1957 – Civil Rights Act of 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, becomes the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress since Reconstruction
- 1957 – Soviets launch Sputnik; "space race" begins
- 1957 – Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the first commercial nuclear power plant in the U.S., goes into service
- 1957 – Little Rock, Arkansas school desegregation. Eisenhower recruits the U.S. National Guard to escort the Little Rock Nine
- 1958 – National Defense Education Act
- 1958 - The Affluent Society written by John Galbraith
- 1958 – NASA formed as the U.S. begins ramping up efforts to explore space
- 1958 – Jack Kilby invents the integrated circuit
- 1959 – The NBC western Bonanza becomes the first drama to be broadcast in color
- 1959 – Cuban Revolution
- 1959 – Landrum–Griffin Act, a labor law that regulates labor unions' internal affairs and their officials' relationships with employers, becomes law
- 1959 – Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th U.S. states; as of November 2023[update], they are the final two states admitted to the union.
- 1959 – Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper are killed in Clear Lake, Iowa in a plane crash.
1960s
- 1960 – U-2 incident, wherein a CIA U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace
- 1960 – Greensboro sit-ins, sparked by four African American college students refusing to move from a segregated lunch counter, and the Nashville sit-ins, spur similar actions and increases sentiment in the Civil Rights Movement.
- 1960 – Author Harper Lee publishes To Kill A Mockingbird
- 1960 – Civil Rights Act of 1960, establishing federal inspection of local voter registration polls and penalties for those attempting to obstruct someone's attempt to register to vote or actually vote
- 1960 – National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam formed
- 1960 – John Fitzgerald Kennedy defeats vice president under the Eisenhower administration, Republican Richard Milhous Nixon. The campaign included the first televised United States presidential debate.
- 1960 – 1960 United States presidential election: John F. Kennedy elected president, Lyndon B. Johnson elected vice president
- 1961 – US breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba
- 1961 – Eisenhower gives celebrated "military–industrial complex" farewell address
Presidency of John F. Kennedy
- January 20, 1961 – Kennedy becomes the 35th president, Johnson becomes the 37th vice president
- 1961 – 23rd Amendment, which grants electors to the District of Columbia
- 1961 – Peace Corps established
- 1961 – Alliance for Progress
- 1961 – Bay of Pigs Invasion
- 1961 – Alan Shepard pilots the Freedom 7 capsule to become the first American in space
- 1961 – Trade embargo on Cuba
- 1961 – Berlin Crisis of 1961
- 1961 – Vietnam War officially begins with 900 military advisors landing in Saigon
- 1961 – OPEC (The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) formed
- 1962 – Trade Expansion Act
- 1962 – Andy Warhol becomes famous for his Campbell's Soup Cans painting
- 1962 – John Glenn orbits the Earth in Friendship 7, becoming the first American to do so
- 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest nuclear confrontation involving the U.S. and USSR
- 1962 – Baker v. Carr, enabling federal courts to intervene in and to decide reapportionment cases
- 1962 – Engel v. Vitale, determines that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools
- 1962 – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
- 1962 – The comic-book superhero Spider-Man debuts in Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) by Marvel Comics
- 1962 – Marilyn Monroe dies of apparent acute barbiturate poisoning at 36
- 1963 – Bob Dylan and Columbia Records release The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (his second studio album), which becomes a classic
- 1963 – Civil rights activist Medgar Evers assassinated outside his home by Byron De La Beckwith
- 1963 – Atomic Test Ban Treaty
- 1963 - The Birmingham campaign and its Children's Crusade focus attention on the civil rights movement
- 1963 – March on Washington; Martin Luther King Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech
- 1963 – The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan published, sparking the women's liberation movement
- 1963 – Community Mental Health Act signed by Kennedy
Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson
- November 22, 1963 – President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas; Vice President Johnson becomes the 36th president.
- 1963 – The man accused of assassinating President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, is shot and killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The assassination marks the first 24-hour coverage of a major news event by the major networks.
- 1964 - Ghetto riots (1964–1969), beginning with the Harlem riot of 1964
- 1964 – The Beatles arrive in the U.S., and subsequent appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, mark the start of the British Invasion (or, an increased number of rock and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular around the world, including the U.S.)
- 1964 – Tonkin Gulf incident; Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
- 1964 – 24th Amendment, prohibiting both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax
- 1964 – President Johnson proposes the Great Society, whose social reforms were aimed at the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. New major spending programs that addressed education, medical care, urban problems, and transportation were launched later in the 1960s.
- 1964 – Economic Opportunity Act
- 1964 – Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing major forms of legalized discrimination against blacks and women, and ended legalized racial segregation in the United States
- 1964 – Panama Canal Zone riots
- 1964 - The Ford Mustang is introduced
- 1964 – In the election, President Johnson won by one of the largest victories in U.S. history, defeating Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater
- 1964 – 1964 United States presidential election: Johnson elected president for a full term, Hubert H. Humphrey elected vice president
- January 20, 1965 – President Johnson begins full term, Humphrey becomes the 38th vice president
- 1965 – President Johnson escalates the United States military involvement in the Vietnam War
- 1965 – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights activist group, led the first of several anti-war marches in Washington, D.C., with about 25,000 protesters
- 1965 – President Johnson appoints Thurgood Marshall as the first African-American Supreme Court Justice
- 1965 - The Selma to Montgomery marches bring attention to the civil rights movement's call for voting rights
- 1965 – Immigration Act of 1965
- 1965 – Voting Rights Act
- 1965 – Medicaid and Medicare enacted
- 1965 – Higher Education Act of 1965
- 1965 – Malcolm X, an African-American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist is assassinated in Harlem, New York
- 1965 – The Watts riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, lasts six days and is the first of several major urban riots due to racial issues.
- 1966 – Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) established
- 1966 – Department of Transportation created
- 1966 – National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act
- 1966 – Miranda v. Arizona established "Miranda rights" for suspects
- 1966 – Feminist group National Organization for Women (NOW) formed
- 1966 – The three major American television networks—NBC, CBS and ABC—have full color lineups in their prime-time schedules.
- 1966 – Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (formerly known as Cassius Clay) declared himself a conscientious objector and refused to go to war. In 1967 Ali was sentenced to five years in prison for draft evasion, but his conviction was later overturned on appeal. In addition, he was stripped of his title and banned from professional boxing for more than three years.
- 1967 – Jack Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to bronchogenic carcinoma (lung cancer), on January 3, 1967 at Parkland Hospital, where Oswald had died and where President Kennedy had been pronounced dead after his assassination.
- 1967 – The first Super Bowl is played, with the Green Bay Packers defeating the Kansas City Chiefs 35–10.
- 1967 – Detroit race riot precipitates the "Long Hot Summer of 1967", when race riots erupt in 159 cities nationwide.
- 1967 – The Outsiders published by S.E. Hinton
- 1967 – Glassboro Summit Conference between U.S. president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin
- 1967 – The "Summer of Love" embodies the growing counterculture, with the Monterey Pop Festival and Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" among the highlights.
- 1967 – 25th Amendment establishes succession to the presidency and procedures for filling a vacancy in the office of the vice president
- 1967 – American Samoa becomes self-governing under a new constitution
- 1968 – On March 31, incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation on television that he will not seek re-election. Opposition toward him and the Democratic Party was growing. The escalation of Vietnam was one of these issues.
- 1968 – Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
- 1968 – The National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam launches the Tet Offensive
- 1968 – Civil Rights Act of 1968, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act
- 1968 – A New York Senator and a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, is assassinated in Los Angeles after winning the California primary for the Democratic Party's nomination for president, by Sirhan Sirhan.
- 1968 – Police clashes with anti-war protesters in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention
- 1968 – U.S. signs Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
- 1968 – 1968 United States presidential election: Richard Nixon elected president, Spiro T. Agnew elected vice president; Shirley Chisholm becomes first black woman elected to U.S. Congress
- 1968 – East L.A. walkouts, or Chicano Blowouts
- 1968 – Apollo 8 and its three-astronaut crew orbit the Moon, Earthrise photograph taken
- 1968 – Music group Simon and Garfunkel release "Mrs. Robinson" from their album The Graduate.
- 1968 – President Johnson awards medals of honor to soldiers from Vietnam.
Presidency of Richard M. Nixon
- January 20, 1969 – Nixon becomes the 37th president, Agnew becomes the 39th vice president
- 1969 – "Vietnamization" begins
- 1969 – Author Maya Angelou publishes I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
- 1969 – Stonewall riots in New York City marks the start of the modern gay rights movement in the U.S.
- 1969 – Chappaquiddick incident, where Sen. Edward M. Kennedy drives off a bridge on his way home from a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, killing his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne
- 1969 – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the Moon on the Apollo 11 mission
- 1969 – The Woodstock Festival in White Lake, New York, becomes an enormously successful musical and cultural gathering; a milestone for the baby-boom generation
- 1969 – Warren E. Burger appointed Chief Justice of the United States to replace Earl Warren
- 1969 – U.S. bombs North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia and Laos
- 1969 – Sesame Street premieres on National Educational Television.
- 1969 – Secret peace talks with Vietnam begin
- 1969 - Although 100-1 shots at the beginning of the season, the New York Mets win the World Series.
See also
- History of the United States (1945–1964)
- History of the United States (1964–1980)
- Timeline of 1960s counterculture
References
- Kutler, Stanley L., ed. Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century (4 vol, 1996)
- Morris, Richard, ed. Encyclopedia of American History (7th ed. 1996)
- Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M. The Almanac Of American History (1983)